


Waiting is the hardest part

by tahariel



Series: Backseat 'verse [13]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - BDSM, BDSM, Caning, Corporal Punishment, Dom/sub, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-08
Updated: 2012-06-08
Packaged: 2017-11-07 07:17:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/428371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tahariel/pseuds/tahariel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles was bound to screw up sooner or later, no matter how hard he tries. And discipline might as well be Erik's middle name.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waiting is the hardest part

It was bound to happen eventually, Charles thinks with anxiety thrumming through his body as he waits for Hank to open the heavy door; the damn thing is about a foot thick, blocks off his project from the rest of the basement level of the building and - not coincidentally - keeps Charles’ telepathy inside and other people’s thoughts outside of the experimental area. He’s always been absent-minded, and there aren’t any clocks in the basement, and he totally forgot about the time - 

Hank finishes tapping in the code and wrenches the door open with a grunt of effort - the mechanism is broken, that’ll need fixing in case they get stuck - swinging it slowly outwards. “I’m really sorry, Charles. I just got so caught up in what we were doing, and I’ve kept you far too long - ”

“Nonsense,” Charles says, trying to sound normal, but he’s already felt Erik’s mind upstairs, and though for the first few seconds his Dom was raging at somebody, the moment after that Erik sensed Charles’ mind reaching instinctively for his as he came out of the blocked area, stilling like a predator who has caught scent of his prey. Charles’ voice comes out tremulous, his breath hitching in his chest as Erik’s fury washes over him, far louder than anyone else in the building. “It’s as much my fault as it is yours, Hank, more so in fact - you had no reason to be watching the time. I should have kept track of it myself.” 

He shoves a hand back through his hair and offers Hank a watery smile as his friend swings the door shut again behind them, locks it again against curious freshmen and prying eyes. “Oh dear. Maybe you should stay down here for a while.”

“Erik’s upstairs?” Hank winces, and says, “If you wouldn’t mind, Charles… I don’t want to abandon you, but…”

“No, no reason for you to get caught up in this.” Charles plucks at the elastic of the suspenders Erik had put on him this morning when they got dressed, cinched him in tight and close and held Charles there with fingers hooked around them to kiss him, warm and affectionate. Erik’s mindset now couldn’t be more different. It’s roiling, and - oh, he’s obviously capable of tracking Charles’ touch, because he’s on his way down from the third floor at speed. “This is the first time he’s been really angry with me.”

There’s a clank of tools in the cardboard box Hank had brought down with them, and his friend hoists it into his arms, giving Charles a sympathetic look. “Well, eventually you had to screw up. You can tell him it’s my fault, if it helps - he can’t do anything to me. Tell him I locked you in there until you gave in and played test dummy for me.”

“I can’t lie to Erik,” Charles says, indignant, then sighs, and makes for the elevator. “He’d never believe it, anyway. I’ll see you tomorrow, Hank.”

“If he ever lets you outside again.”

He laughs, but it’s just as watery as his smile, and as the elevator doors close Charles squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, absorbed in his contrition and cursing himself. Then he reaches out for Erik and tells him where he is in a flash of explanations about Hank’s experiment, says, _I’m coming upstairs now. I’m really sorry, Erik, I lost track of the time -_

 _Get out on the first floor,_ Erik thinks back, and even in his head the words are short and clipped.

When the elevator doors open again Erik is leaning against the far wall of the corridor, arms folded across his chest and an utterly neutral expression on his face, blank of all emotion. That’s not good - that’s his public Dom face, he’s never this closed off with Charles. His suit is just as fresh and pristine as it was when Charles put it on him this morning, crisp-cut and razor sharp. “We’re leaving,” he says, and shoves Charles’ satchel and jacket into his arms - Charles had left them in his office, Erik must have gone there looking for him. “Don’t speak. We’ll discuss this at home.”

“But - the appointment - ” Charles says before he can stop himself, mouth snapping shut as soon as he realises what he’s done, and Erik’s eyes _blaze_.

“Missed by a good two hours.” Erik straightens and grabs Charles by the back of the neck, gives him a shove along the corridor towards the exit. “I am so angry with you right now. Don’t push me.”

There’s no point in trying to defend himself when he’s utterly in the wrong - it’ll only make Erik madder, and so Charles lets himself be led, eyes on his feet and head bowed meekly as Erik strides along like he owns the place, even once they’re outside, dominance pouring off him in waves despite his total and utter lack of external emotion. It’s now that he looks most like Emma, cold and disinterested and able to stare anyone down and out of their way. Charles shudders with a tremulous sort of fear that is laced with something else entirely, despite his remorse and a healthy dose of shame for displeasing his Dom. There is something about this Erik, even when Charles knows he is to be punished, that sparks an urgent need in Charles to kneel for not _entirely_ punitive reasons.

Instead of going towards the subway Erik veers off towards the main road, and Charles stumbles for a moment as his feet try to go the wrong way, only for Erik to catch him by the arm and hold him upright, keeping him from falling. He wants to ask where they’re going, but doesn’t dare; the anger is still there in Erik’s mind, raging against its confinement like a captive dragon, breathing fire.

Nobody even turns to look at them when they reach the busy sidewalk and push through the crowd to the kerb, Erik tugging Charles up against his side before raising his free arm to flag down a taxi. He must be emitting some kind of Dominance signal, because one pulls up almost immediately, and the driver doesn’t even make a smart remark as Erik bundles Charles into the cab, climbs in after him and grabs for the seatbelt to lock Charles into his seat before Charles can reach for it.

He gives their address in a voice so calm it could cut glass, and they pull away from the kerb into traffic, leaving the university behind as they head downtown.

Charles sinks into his seat, hands falling automatically into the neutral position in his lap, feet neatly together and head still bowed; he keeps his eyes on his hands and away from the window, only glances at Erik from the corner of his eye long enough to see the tension in Erik’s strong jaw where his teeth are clenched, grinding against one another.

“I didn’t know where you were,” Erik says eventually, reaching forward and sliding shut the little plexiglass window between them and the driver to give them the illusion of privacy. “I waited, Charles. For forty-five minutes. You didn’t answer your cell, or your desk phone, and when I tried calling for you in my head you weren’t there. I had to call Emma from the back of a taxi, Charles, and admit I can’t even keep track of my own sub before she would look. She searched for you for a good fifteen minutes and couldn’t find a trace of you. Then when I finally got back over here from the tailor’s nobody at the university knew where you were, either.”

Erik turns to look at Charles, grips his chin between his thumb and forefinger to force Charles to meet his eyes, the laugh lines at the corners of his eyes crinkled now in anger. His grip is a little too tight, will probably bruise, but Charles says nothing. “I thought you were _dead_ , and instead you were playing games with Hank McCoy in the basement, in a telepath-proof room you never told me existed, letting him plug wires into your brain and try his best to fry you!” 

The hand on his chin shifts to lace into his hair, and Erik glares at him, fury in his gaze but - now that Charles is looking, when he looks past the anger in Erik’s head there’s fear under there too, a deep-seated terror of losing Charles that left Erik raging and impotent, unable to act or find out where he was, looking for him everywhere he knew to look and finding no trace of him. “I thought you were dead, you idiot,” Erik snarls, and shakes him, shoves Charles’ head back down so he can only look at his own lap, the hand on the back of his head almost but not quite gentling into a caress, snatched away before Erik can soften. “Do you think I’m happy about punishing you? Because I’m not. God, Charles. Damn it.”

He wants to say he’s sorry, but Erik hasn’t said he can speak yet, so instead Charles shuffles as best he can in his seat to rest his forehead on Erik’s shoulder, still hiding his face but trying to tell him how sorry Charles is for scaring him, for forgetting. He can’t stand it that Erik is so angry with him, feels small and unhappy and all he really wants is to curl up in Erik’s lap and be forgiven, because usually Erik is thinking nice things about Charles, and he’s not right now.

“Don’t try that on me,” Erik says, and he almost - _almost_ wavers, Charles can hear it, there’s an infuriated fondness under his voice, but he doesn’t, just takes hold of Charles’ hair and straightens him up again, pushes him back to his side of the cab. “Abeyant position, Charles, for the rest of the trip.”

It seems to take forever and no time at all to get home, the sounds of people and traffic outside the windows that Charles doesn’t turn his head to look at, keeps his eyes fixed downward and listens to Erik fume beside him, fingers clenching and unclenching where he has his arm braced on the seat between them, bonding bracelet flexing and twisting around his wrist where Charles can just see it. He wants to touch his collar for reassurance, keeps his hands in his lap, palms up and fingers loose and open, soft. 

“Thank you,” Erik says to the driver when they finally arrive, opens the plexiglass window and says it again as he passes the cash through, and, “Up, Charles,” when his sub doesn’t move fast enough, half-lifting him out of the cab and onto the sidewalk so that Erik can climb out after him. “Upstairs.”

Charles goes into their building first, but he could hardly be said to be leading.

When he catches sight of himself in the mirror on the back wall of the elevator he looks pale as milk, all the colour drained from his face. His freckles stand out on his skin like specks of brown paint, his lip swollen from the pinch of his teeth. He releases it with a quiet sound, licks at the sore spot and ducks his head further when Erik looks at him in the mirror, too. Anger has made Erik incandescent, the strong lines of his face sharper, nearly unbearably handsome. It’s claustrophobic, trapped in the elevator with all of that emotion between them in such a small space.

Finally, thankfully, they reach their floor, and once inside the apartment Erik shuts the door behind them quietly, not with a bang but with a whisper of well-oiled hinges, and says, “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

“I’m sorry,” Charles says, head still bowed, letting his satchel slump off his shoulder to the floor. “I didn’t mean to make you worry. I just lost track of time, and when I looked up and realised - I really am very sorry, Erik. Please forgive me.”

He can only see Erik’s shoes - polished black leather - and his beautifully-pressed pants, the lowest part of his crisp white shirt, the very bottom of his tie moving side to side as Erik reaches up to loosen it around his throat. “If you had called me to tell me you were caught up, then we could have talked about it. If you had told me where you were, we could have talked about it. If you had told me you were letting a grad student _experiment on your brain_ , Charles, then - we couldn’t have talked about that, we would have ended up exactly where we are now, because that is not going to happen, Charles. You are not a science fair project!” The tie jerks viciously, knot coming undone in an act of desperation against Erik’s assault. “And doing that behind my back - you’ve betrayed my trust. You’ve been recklessly endangering yourself against my express orders. And then you broke your promise and you weren’t where you said you’d meet me, didn’t even think of me at all for two whole hours.”

“What are you going to do?” Charles asks, and he hears his voice tremble, sees Erik’s hands clench into fists at his sides when he hears it, can feel Erik’s unhappiness beating against his mind, along with determination to see it through.

“Go to the bedroom and strip. Leave your clothes there. Then go to the closet and bring me the silver cock ring and the bamboo cane out here.”

Charles swallows, and goes to do as he’s told. He takes off his clothes as quickly as he can when his hands are shaking, tries his best to fold them in a neat pile, but it’s a bit lopsided. He’s never been caned before. The implement itself is propped alongside Erik’s boots in the corner of the closet, and Charles pulls it out and just looks at it for a moment, weighing it in his hands.

It’s long, narrow and flexible, the pale wood smooth and flawless, not a rough edge or a splinter to be found when he runs a finger along it. The handle is fitted metal, of course, gleams clean and cared for. Charles snaps it in the air experimentally and flinches at the whistling sound it makes, bites at his lip again.

“Charles. Stop dawdling or I’ll add to your tally,” Erik calls from the living room, and Charles swallows, grabs the cock ring from the dresser drawer, and obeys.

Erik is standing by the coffee table, still in his shoes but with his suit jacket off and his shirt sleeves rolled up to bare his forearms. Charles can see the veins of them where he likes to lick a line along Erik’s skin, but there’s none of that going to be happening now. When he gets close enough Erik takes the cane from him and puts it aside, takes the cock ring, too, and says, “Hands behind your back.”

He handles Charles’ limp cock dispassionately as he works the cock ring on over the soft, sensitive flesh, pushing it down the shaft and expanding it a little to get it behind Charles’ balls, tightening it again after and tugging on the metal with his power to make sure it’ll stay put. “You’re not going to get anything out of this,” he says, “and neither am I. Now lie down on your belly on the table, arms to either side. You can hold onto the legs if you need to.”

The table rocks a little as Charles lies down on it - the surface is cold but warms up quickly when he settles, the cock ring clattering against it and dragging downward. Charles turns his head to one side so he can lie flat, and shifts until his arms are bent at the elbows over the edge, tentatively wraps his hands around the table legs. “How many?” he asks, closes his eyes and tries not to tense.

“As many as it takes until I think you’ve learnt your lesson,” Erik says, and the whistle of the cane is the only warning he has before pain blossoms sharp and biting across his left buttock. Charles yelps and jerks against the table, and just as the pain is fading Erik hits him again, on the other side, a bright sting and a crack as the cane comes down.

He can feel his ass heating up, and each time Erik hits him the pain takes longer to fade, until his whole lower half is throbbing and stinging, his upper thighs and the swell of his buttocks burning with it. He can feel welts rising, hear himself panting hard and loud and, somewhere in the background, Erik doing the same, though probably Erik isn’t crying.

It feels good at first, like spanking but sharper, better, and he can feel his cock try to swell against the constriction of the cock ring, but then Erik hits him enough that it starts to hurt more than it arouses, and he bites his lip and tastes blood.

The thing is - he could stop this at any time if he used one of his safewords, and Erik would stop. Charles has to believe he would stop, even though Charles has never tested him, because knowing he would stop if Charles asked him to - really asked him - lets Charles endure it, makes it easier to bear. If he messes up, Erik needs to be able to punish him - if Charles wimps out then things won’t really be okay, and the issue will fester between them, unresolved. Better to take his lashes and erase the error. He’s whimpering when Erik hits him again on the side of his left cheek, limp and submissive under the strokes.

He waits for the next one, and when it doesn’t come he sniffles wetly, stays put.

“Oh, Charles,” Erik says, and there’s a clatter as he drops the cane to the floor, then hands on Charles’ back drawing him away from the table and pulling him in close against Erik’s body. “You were very good for me. I’m very proud of you. What a good boy.”

Charles cries a bit into his shirt, overwhelmed - there’s an immediate rush of endorphins and shame after the end of pain that gets him every time, and Erik rocks him for a while, careful of his sore behind. “You won’t do that again, will you?” Erik asks when he’s mostly finished sobbing for breath, Charles’ legs drawn up over Erik’s and his head tucked in under Erik’s chin, hands clenched in the fine cotton covering his chest. “You’ll be more careful for me. I only want you to be safe. I thought something terrible had happened.”

“I’m sorry I made us miss the appointment,” Charles says into the wet shoulder of Erik’s shirt where his tears have soaked in, can taste them on his lips where they’ve run down his cheeks and are drying like seawater, taut and salty on his skin. “I know it was important.”

The body under his heaves a sigh, and there’s a hand in his hair stroking it away from his face, tangling in it where it’s matted with sweat at his temples, slowly easing out the knots with gentle fingers. “It is important. We have to go to Emma’s charity thing, and unfortunately appearances matter there. I don’t like them, but I’ve skipped a few too many and it’s starting to make people question Emma’s authority over me. They’ll be expecting me to show off my new submissive, too, all the rich bitches and assholes who pay for a plate at these things as though they’re making a difference, when they could pay twenty times the price and not dent their wallets.”

Charles thinks about some of the parties his mother had dragged him to as a child and shudders, thinking of the way some of the subs were dressed - or not. “What do I have to wear?”

“Nothing you don’t want to,” Erik says, resting his chin on the top of Charles’ head. “I was thinking a toga, maybe. It’ll keep what’s mine covered up and the rest of the stuck-up society Doms wishing they got to take it off you later. I’ll probably have to snarl at a few of them to get them to back off.”

“Oh.” Charles can’t help feeling a little bit warm inside at the thought of it, of Erik defending his territory, of being Erik’s territory. “How long do I have to keep the cock ring on for?”

“Until tomorrow at least. I want the message to stick,” Erik says, and his hand comes away from Charles’ hair to rub over his bottom where his skin is swollen and sore, makes Charles jerk and whine low in his throat with the sudden sharp ache. “Let’s go put some cream on this. I’m feeling generous, so we won’t use a bruise-enhancer. If you forget something like this again then we will, and you won’t be sitting down for a week.”

Erik has him bend over the sink in the bathroom while he rubs the cream in, and Charles can see his expression in the mirror the whole time, hot and avid as he coats Charles’ welts. He tries moaning a little but Erik doesn’t go anywhere near Charles’ hole and glances at him with eyebrows raised, not fooled in the least. “Do you want to sleep on the floor?” he asks, and when Charles shakes his head, slaps him on the ass and says, “Then we’re done.”


End file.
